The Eagles of Austerlitz
of the commander, a plain dot in a knot of his marshal's
plumes, also the allied hosts now marching down Pratzen
Hill and across the open against Soult; in the plain north
against Lannes, and in the south, great masses of them,
against Davoust's thinned blue line.
There, in the south, lay the trap and the danger. But
on they came, first the fur-capped and fur-caped Cos-
sacks, in the distance appearing like toy soldiers trotting
briskly over the snow, their little lances at all angles; then,
more stolidly, the Russian foot, like a muddy brown flood,
oozing over the white, now eating into the blue. And every-
where sounded the crackle of musketry, intermittent on
the left and center, but continuous and in a sharp cre-
scendo in the south; while all over the plain and hill, as
if with its coming the sun had caused everything to flower,
there was a sudden blossoming of cannon—swift stabs of
flame like orange stalks with scarlet-lined blossoms of
smoke at the ends.
The marshals gathered round him teased him to begin;
but he dismissed them with this word of caution: "You
know my plan of battle. Do not grow hot and slip the
leash too soon. In the appointed second I shall send word.5'
The impatient group—Lannes, Ney, Soult, Bernadotte,
Duroc, Rapp, Bessieres, and Oudinot—broke up and
galloped in different directions to their respective posts;
and Napoleon turned to the spy-glass, which he rested on
a cadet's shoulder.
On this axis the instrument swung south. The brown
flood was eating farther into the blue. Davoust was giving
way; no rout, slowly and in good order. The bait had
worked.
Now he did not need his glass. Two hundred yards in
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